567. God Doesn't Need Our Help, with Julie Harwick

Women World Leaders' Podcast

It’s hard to be patient when it doesn’t seem like God is moving in the way I expect Him to. Some part of me wants to step in and give Him a hand. Helping is a good thing, right? In today's podcast, Julie Harwick shares from the Bible and her personal life how God has shown us that He is in complete control.

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Welcome to Women World Leaders podcast. I’m your host, Julie Harwick. Thank you for joining me today as we celebrate God’s grace in our lives, in this ministry and around the world.

The steady cadence of marching feet dragged Peter from the depths of a heavy sleep. “Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour has come, and the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners. Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!” There was an ominous tone in Jesus’ voice that Peter had never heard before. It immediately overcame his sleepiness and brought him to high alert. He sensed danger, even though he was still unsure of what Jesus meant. A sizeable number of Roman soldiers and temple guards approached, carrying torches and weapons as they followed a familiar figure. Judas Iscariot grasped Jesus by the shoulders and quickly kissed Him on both cheeks while carefully averting his eyes from the Teacher’s gaze. Peter’s mind was flooded with memories of the previous hours, “one of you will betray Me… My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death… you will all fall away, for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered… even if all fall away, I will not.” As the soldiers roughly grabbed Jesus’ arm, Peter’s heart pounded in his ears and adrenalin took over his body. Without even realizing what he was doing, he grabbed the sword from a temple guard’s scabbard and clumsily brought it down, slicing off the ear of the high priest’s servant. “Put your sword away,” Jesus commanded. “Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?” He reached down and picked up the severed ear from the dusty ground returning it to its’ rightful place. If it weren’t for the blood dripping off the servant’s face onto his tunic, there would be no evidence that it had ever been sliced from his head. It was to be the Galilean teacher’s final act of healing. As the soldiers pushed Jesus ahead of them toward the city, Peter watched, powerless to move, struggling to make sense of what had just happened.

If you’re like me, it’s easy to judge Peter for the way he conducted himself on that final night with Jesus. Impulsive is the first descriptive word that comes to mind when I think of Peter. Slicing off an ear is certainly evidence of that trait. But would we be any different? I wanted to begin the podcast by trying to experience that night in the garden from Peter’s perspective. In trying to make sense of what was happening, I think his first thought was, “ This is not going well and Jesus isn’t taking action. I have to do something!” Unfortunately, his thought process is probably painfully familiar to many of us.

As I think about Peter’s situation, it brings back some memories I’d just as soon forget. One of the most pivotal times in my life was a summer missions trip I took with Teen Missions International when I was 16. It took my relationship with God much deeper and brought me tremendous growth in many different areas. I hoped that someday, my children might have a similar experience. Teen Missions kept me on their mailing list and in February of every year, I received a brochure detailing all the mission trips available the following summer. I always enjoyed looking through it to see where they were going and what they’d be doing. The year my twin daughters were about to turn 10, I noticed that the organization was now operating pre-teen teams open to kids from 10-13, so I mentioned it to them. That prompted a lot of questions about what it was like going on a missions trip. I was encouraged by their interest and described what my experience had been like. I wasn’t suggesting that they do it, but I probably painted a pretty attractive picture of what it could be like.

Could God be calling them to do this? I was excited at the prospect, but did my best to avoid steering them in any direction. I suggested that they pray about it long and hard if they thought it was something God might want them to do. My husband and I also prayed for God’s direction in the matter, and asked that if it was something He wanted for them, that they wouldn’t be able to let it go. If you’ve never had a 10-year-old, you should know that they are very impressionable, easily excited and in our particular case, very eager to please their parents. They hadn’t had much experience in praying for God’s direction, but they were pretty sure that He was telling them to do this.

We talked about some of the difficulties they were likely to face, but somehow, those didn’t seem as compelling as the excitement and fun that the experience promised . As we began to help them raise support, a number of our friends and family seemed surprised that we were letting them go on a six-week missions trip at the tender age of 10. The team they selected would be staying in Merrit Island, Florida, approximately an hour’s drive from our home, so we would have the opportunity to see them once a week. They had stayed away from home with grandparents and at sleepovers and they would have each other, so it didn’t really seem all that crazy to us.

Raising support was difficult. We reasoned that it was because it was for two instead of one and some people might question the validity of a missions trip for 10-year-olds. We wound up having to make up what they couldn’t raise in support ourselves and it was substantial. In retrospect, that probably should’ve caused us to question if God was really calling them to do this.

To make a six-week story short, it did not turn out at all as I’d hoped. There was no phenomenal spiritual growth. They cried many tears, counted the days until it was over and came home with one case of strep throat and two cases of head lice that persisted for weeks to come. They felt that their team’s assigned work was pointless and didn’t accomplish anything of real significance. Twenty years later, they still can’t find anything positive to say about the experience and we’ve all come to the conclusion that it was a colossal mistake.

At the time, I could come up with so many reasons to support the idea. They would be surrounded by other kids their age who were also eager to serve God. They’d learn bible verses and how to have a quiet time and that when things are hard, they can rely on God. I fully expected them to have an experience just like mine. But I was 16 and they were 10. I was independent and eager to try my wings. They were not very outgoing or confident around strangers. The timing was not right, but because of my desire for them to make huge spiritual strides at the ripe old age of 10, I got ahead of God and tried to make something happen that was not part of His plan. His plan was more long-range than mine, and I wasn’t seeing Him doing anything to move things along. Maybe a little like Peter. Maybe even more like Abraham.

Romans 4 tells us that “Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.” He is listed in Hebrews 11 as an example of faith that we should emulate. He certainly earned that recognition by uprooting himself from his homeland and obediently following God into a land completely foreign to him. God blessed him for this obedience with vast amounts of land and wealth. But sadly, Abraham had no children to receive the inheritance and he was already more than 75-years-old. God spoke to Abraham and promised that he would have a son and that his descendants would number more than the stars in the desert sky. Abraham believed God and eagerly waited to see the promise come to pass. But years passed and nothing happened except that Abraham and Sarah got even older.

Recognizing that she was already too old to conceive, Sarah reasoned that God must’ve intended to give her husband a child through some other means. The elderly couple had grown tired of waiting for God to act, so they agreed that Sarah should give Abraham her maid, Hagar, as a concubine so that she could give him a son in Sarah’s place. Thanks to Abraham and Sarah’s intervention, Abraham had a son, Ishmael, by the time he was 86. But God made it clear that Ishmael was not the child of His promise and predicted that strife and trouble would result from their presumption in solving the problem on their own. Another 15 years passed before Sarah became pregnant at the age of 90 and delivered God’s promised child, Issac. God had it under control from the moment He made the promise, but his timetable was quite different from their’s and Abraham and Sarah found it impossible to wait.

The two boys grew up as stepbrothers who didn’t really get along. They passed that rivalry on to successive generations and it continues to be a source of conflict. If you didn’t already know, Issac became the father of Jacob, also known as Israel, from whom all Jews descend. Ishmael became the father of the Arab nation which includes all the countries currently in conflict with Israel such as Gaza, Syria, parts of Lebanon and Iran. Abraham and Sarah believed they were doing their part to help God’s plan along by having Ishmael, but God had never intended it. The result was thousands of years of conflict with no end in sight.

I pray that my efforts at “helping God along with His plan,” will not produce the long-term, horrific ramifications that Abraham and Sarah created. Twenty years later, it appears that my girls escaped relatively unscathed. Their relationships with God don’t look just like mine, but that was never His intention for them anyway. They are both walking with Him as He leads them and I have learned that my job is simply to pray for them and leave the rest in His hands. It seems the God of the universe really doesn’t need my help.

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